Using A Cellphone LCD As Auxiliary Linux Display

October 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[Neil] is driving this Siemens A60 LCD using a parallel port on his Linux box. He likes this module because it has an integrated LED back-light, controller IC, and the pads are large enough for a human to solder. He notes that the screen runs on 2.9V, which matches the forward voltage of the LEDs used as back-lights. This means it is possible to use one f the LEDs as a shunt to drop incoming voltage down to a safe level for the controller. In fact, that’s what he did. The data lines are connected to the parallel port along with some current limiting resistors. The LEDs are connected with resistor calculated for maximum brightness, with the output from the LED used as the source voltage for the LCD controller chip.Whether you want to use one of these screens with a PC or something else, the code that [Neil] worked out should provide the information necessary to do so.

The Nokia cellphone LCD post inspired [Neil] to send in a tip about this project. If you’ve got well documented hacks that you’re just sitting on why not let us know about them?

Shiny Motorcycle Computer

October 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

We’re rather surprised at how popular it has become to build your own motorcycle computer. [Mario Mauerer] tipped us off about his shiny motorcycle computer (translated) for his Yamaha XTZ 750. It uses an ATmega644 microcontroller to pull a variety of data together and display it on this white LED backlit display. He connected a flow meter to the fuel line to monitor gas consumption. Oil temperature is captured by inserting a brass tube (containing the sensor) through a hole in the oil cap and soldering it in place. Water temperature is gathered by measuring the external temperature of one of the cooling lines. [Mario] uses a rotary encode with a click function as the control interface device, and a battery backed real time clock keeps time.

A quick look at the PCBs tells the tale of good circuit design. But we do wonder about catching the reflection of the sun in that shiny bezel.

Touring The Available Nokia LCD Screens

October 14, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[Rossum’s] taking a look at the Nokia LCD screens that are both plentiful and begging to be bent to your will. For quite some time the Nokia 6100 screens have been used in a lot hacks, but he wanted to see what else is out there. He digs into his junk box of cell phones and comes up with a couple to test; the Nokia 6101 and Nokia 2760. The screens use a 3-wire SPI interface, which he sniffs out with a logic analyzer. At power-up the cellphone polls the screen to determine which type of LCD controller is connected. [Rossum] grabs these commands from the logic analyzer and uses it to determine the hardware in use with each screen.

He made himself a nice breakout board which has connectors for several different screens. The firmware he’s using detects when a screen is attached and switches to the applicable protocol for that display. Take a look at the video after the break.

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Mini Pinball Is All-pixels

October 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

You won’t find those familiar steel balls inside this mini-pinball cabinet. That’s because [Luis’] latest creation is a fun way to play virtual pinball. The playing field is a 10″ LCD screen with an accompanying 8″ screen in the marquee. Inside the well-crafted case you’ll find a mini-ITX motherboard running HyperPin, a frontend software suite for LCD-based virtual pinball. He’s also using PinMame for the score board that was often provided by a gas plasma display on newer mechanical machines. There’s video after the break, and take a moment to check out [Luis’] other mini-cabinet builds.

What’s that you say? No substitute for the real thing? That’s exactly what [Ben Heck] thinks too.

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Launchpad Takes Ultra Low Power To The Extreme

September 30, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 62 Comments

We’ve all known the MSP430s under the Launchpad are designed to be low power, but who wants to bet how long the chip can last on only 20F worth of capacitors? A couple of hours? A day at max? [Kenneth Finnegan] setup a MSP430 with supercaps to find out. To make sure the chip is actually running, [Kenneth] programmed it to count from 0 to 9 over a period of 10 seconds, and then reset. To get it ultra low power, the chip is in sleep mode most of the time, and a raw low current LCD is used to display the output. While [Kenneth] simply checks the chip every few hours to see if it’s still counting, a setup much like the Flash Destroyer, tracking a clock and then storing the current value would get a more exact time of death. Either way, it’s been over 3 weeks…and still counting. Video after the rift.

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Digital View-Master

August 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

Who could forget the stereoscopic goodness of a View-Master? [Tuttle] put a modern flair on the classic optical device by adding two 1.5″ LCD screens. The screens replace the film disk of the original, showing slightly different images to produce a 3D effect. No word on a camera rig used to take the original images, but for our money this a great way to make something out of those useless key chain picture frames.

PIC Based Picture Frame

July 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

Take a PIC 24HJ256GP206 processor and add a dash of knock-off touchscreen and a pinch of SD card compatibility for a DIY digital picture frame. [Daniel] wrote his own driver for the HX8347 controlled LCD that can achieve 15 FPS at 320×240 resolution with 16-bit color. As this was a gift for his wife, [Daniel] included a heart-shaped ring of LEDs that fade in and out like an electronic pulse. He notes that the JPEG decoder runs rather slow but that’s mostly because of the bottleneck caused when accessing data from the SD card. We’ve got more pictures and a link to the source code after the break.

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